The present invention relates to pet commodes, particularly of the type which is connectable to a sewage drain and which operates automatically.
One of the complicating factors of modern high density urban life is the difficulty which it creates for pet owners, particularly as concerns their pets' daily need to eliminate bodily wastes.
This problem is particularly acute in the case of dogs.
In particular in the case of seeing eye dogs great difficulties are encountered in providing for elimination by the animal. Quite often the blind owner must either permit the animal to relieve himself indoors or must incur the risks of walking the animal outdoors.
Even when a dog owner can walk his pet outdoors several times a day, no fully satisfactory location can be found for the elimination of fecal wastes. Elimination on the sidewalk, in the street curb, or on lawns raises obvious objections as does elimination in vacant lots, where children often play.
This problem is becoming increasingly difficult for dog owners as urban density increases and as more and more communities pass ordinances limiting the places where pets can defecate.
When the pet cannot be taken outside daily, for various reasons, the problem becomes even more acute. Litter boxes, newspaper, or other receptacles must then be provided for the elimination of waste products and require a periodic cleaning out, which is odious and time consuming and which inhibits the owner from leaving his home for long periods of time. In addition, such receptacles are a source of unpleasant odors and can therefore be satisfactorily placed only in a few locations around a house or apartment.
Among previous proposals addressed to this problem are various pet toilets, some of which are to be attached atop a toilet bowl intended for human use. These devices have various drawbacks. In particular, those which are to be attached atop a toilet bowl can be reached by the pet only with difficulty and require that the pet accurately position itself in order for the waste products to fall into the underlying toilet bowl. In addition, such a device, particularly if it provides for automatic toilet flushing, can be removed from the toilet only with difficulty. Therefore, a toilet equipped with such a device is, for all intents and purposes, made unavailable to human users.
Other units which have been previously proposed, whether they are to be cleaned automatically or under manual control, can often not be completely cleaned and thus leave waste residues which are unsightly and odorous.
Many of these difficulties are eliminated by the novel pet commode which is the subject of my U.S. Pat. No. 3,842,803, issued Oct. 27, 1974 and titled PET COMMODE. The commode disclosed therein includes a housing having opposed front and rear walls, opposed side walls extending to a height greater than that of the front and rear walls, and a bottom recessed below the upper extremities of the side walls and provided with an outlet passage. The commode further includes a floor located in the housing for supporting a pet and receiving its bodily waste products, the floor being below the upper extremities of the front and rear walls and being mounted for pivotal movement about a substantially horizontal axis for permitting waste products deposited thereon to fall onto the housing bottom. A water spray device is also provided and is located in the housing below the floor for directing water sprays against the floor, the floor surface receiving waste products being struck by such sprays when the floor undergoes its pivotal movement. The spray device is associated with a controllable water delivery arrangement and the floor is associated with a controllable drive unit for imparting the desired pivotal movement thereto. A control unit is connected to the water delivery device and the drive unit and is responsive to the departure of a pet from the floor to cause the water delivery element to deliver water under pressure to the spray device and to cause the drive unit to impart the desired pivotal movement to the floor.
The floor is preferably constituted by a plurality of parallel slats each arranged to pivot about a longitudinally extending axis. The floor is preferably arranged to pivot through an angle of 180.degree. or less under control of the drive unit and to pivot back to its original position at the end of a predetermined period of time.
The spray device of this commode may be constituted by one or several spray pipes which extend parallel to the floor slats and which are each located directly below the narrow space separating two adjacent slats. Each spray pipe is provided with spray outlets disposed for causing water to be sprayed generally upwardly, but at an angle to the vertical to prevent water from spraying upwardly through the space between adjacent slats and thus striking surfaces outside of the housing.
The spray device further includes a spray pipe extending along the upper edge of each side wall and having a plurality of nozzles or outlet tubes extending through openings provided in the associated side wall. Some of these tubes supply a flushing stream to the side wall to wash away urine. The remaining tubes direct water streams onto the floor.